


Remember!

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume III [6]
Category: 17th Century CE RPF, DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Historical Accuracy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, Rescue Missions, Twenty Years After
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:26:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5305664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The battle for the king's head against a vindictive foe comes to a climax.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Newcastle, January 1649**

I knelt on the cold stones of the abbey of Newcastle, like a penitent of Aramis’ One God, and I asked my brother for help. The roundhead at my feet, whose blood spilled instead of a sacrificial dog, lay quite dead. Aramis had given him Catholic absolution in his death throes, which my flittermouse did not pretend was done out of Christian mercy. 

“Ares, help me,” I said. “This war is lost and I don’t know what to do.”

I felt lost in this sea of war, unaccustomed to it after so long an absence from the battlefield, becalmed upon the windless seas. I had not meditated in months. A call to arms had roused me from my bucolic idyll, but another call had claimed me somewhere along the way and I lost my mind in my lover’s arms. 

“Ares, guide me,” I prayed and shut my eyes and awaited an answer that would not come.

In the bitter English cold, I finally slept with my face pressed into Aramis’ neck, his hand trapped between my thighs where he had furtively finished me off, stealing my gasp of pleasure with his lips. 

A bright gleam illuminated my mind, my dream taking on that ethereal focus that came to me when a supernatural intruder gained access to my subconscious. The English fog cleared and I found myself on a cliff overlooking the azure hues of the Aegean, easily recognizable as they shimmered in the rays of Helios.

“Ares couldn’t come,” a voice spoke behind me, a woman’s voice, a voice as melodious as it was piercing. A hundred arrows right through the heart.

I turned and was taken aback by the face before my eyes.

“Aphrodite,” I sighed, frowning, “You’re wearing Aramis.”

“What else did you expect me to do?” my divine sister laughed. “Your every thought, every fiber of your mind is full of him. You know very well how this works – I cannot manifest my human form so far from Olympus. I can only come wearing the guise of the ones you love.”

“I don’t have pleasant memories of goddesses impersonating my lover,” I said and averted my eyes from that face. With her divinity illuminating his features from within, I could barely stand to look. “I wish you would choose someone else.”

She rolled her eyes, or rather _his_ eyes, in a way that wasn’t unlike something he would have done. “All right, close your eyes and _try_ to think of another person you love. I’ll see if we can accommodate you.” She humored me, it seemed. I hoped that meant she had come to me with benevolent intentions.

I shut my eyes and when I opened them again, the face that smiled back at me had been my mother’s. 

“Better?” Aphrodite asked, her hands gently brushing my shoulders, making my heart flutter in my chest.

“Much,” I replied, taking in beloved features that time had almost wiped from my memory. “Now, will you tell me why you have come?”

“You prayed to Ares and opened the gates, but your mind is full of such love-filth right now, no other god can enter you. Well done, brother!” She threw her head back in a full-bodied laughter. “Eris tried,” she continued to giggle, “But could barely penetrate past the top layer of rainbows and Cupid’s arrows. If gods could vomit, she said, she would have! Ares wanted to come in answer to your invocation, but in the end, he had to send me instead.”

“What are you saying?” I said, sounding rather scandalized despite knowing exactly what she was talking about.

“Your brain is nothing but love mush, my poor Athos,” she stroked my cheek. “Of course, as the Goddess of Love Mush, this pleases me greatly. You know I’m rooting for you, don’t you, brother?” 

I rubbed the back of my neck uncomfortably. So, every god and goddess on Olympus was up in my business, but none but Aphrodite could penetrate the impenetrable barrier of _pure love_ that my mind had produced during seven months of… waiting. I did not know whether to laugh or to weep.

“What did you mean that Eris tried?” I finally pulled my mental faculties together enough to ask.

“She’s furious. You and Aramis – together again – it is too much for her. She is determined to destroy you, one way or another.” Aphrodite didn’t mince words, for which I was strangely grateful. “That was one of the things Ares wanted me to warn you about: since she can’t get inside your head, she’s focused her strength on your sworn enemy. That woman’s son is already bent on revenge, his mind is an opened gateway to Discord.”

“You mean Mordaunt? I want nothing to do with that kid.”

“Nevertheless. Eris will drive him to you, so prepare. Already he is among the Briton Roundheads.”

“I have to help King Charles, Aphrodite. I have no time to waste on…”

“Love games?” she laughed again. I blushed for there was no denying she had a point. “Now, as for your king, I do have another message from our brother.”

“Yes,” I knelt in anticipation, “Tell me.”

“Ares says your King Charles is lost. Even as we speak, the Scots have been purchased and stand at the ready to betray him. You’re on your own, brother. Personally, I’d rather have you and Aramis flee. But you won’t, will you, Athos?”

“I do not run, Aphrodite!” I spat out with indignation. Besides, what had I to run from? If the English king was doomed, the least we could do is protect him until we were hacked into pieces. I was proof of the fact that being hacked (or chewed) into pieces wasn’t always the end.

“We cannot protect you in the land of Britons,” my sister’s voice sounded almost pleading. “If Eris was to succeed, if this Mordaunt managed to cause you or your revenant some serious harm… Well, I might feel sincerely devastated for a bit.”

“I understand,” I replied, “And I thank you, dear sister, for everything you’ve said.”

“Remember,” her hand brushed along my cheek, “I really _am_ rooting for you. Most of Olympus takes your part.” She winked and then my mother’s features dissolved before my eyes and the Aegean grew covered by a cold and aggressively British fog.

***

**Blasted British Isles, January 1649**

I did not recall the last time I saw a ray of genuine sunshine. The Tyne, like a black thread of bile, spilled its putrid waters reeking of the bitter British hops between the Ironsides of Cromwell and the Highlanders of Scotland. D’Artagnan and I have been sent by that scoundrel Mazarin to aid that black-hatted usurper in unseating the King of the Britons, and I was led to believe a barony had been riding on it.

What would Athos have said? Well, he hadn’t said much. The letter we had received from him in Paris had borne neither date nor post-stamp, as if it had been floated down the river Styx itself into our hands. _Aramis and I are very unhappy._ Yeah, right. I remembered very well the way they looked at the tavern of the Hermitage. Those looks, those _smiles_ , the color in Aramis’ cheek - the scarlet tint of demi-divine blood. They had finally reconciled, it seemed, but at what cost? And where the devil had they disappeared together for so many months?

 _Think often of Raoul_ , Athos had written. D’Artagnan and I had scratched our heads over that one, indeed.

“Does he mean his parrot?” the Gascon asked.

“That’s the only Raoul I’ve ever known,” I replied, thinking that technically that wasn’t a lie, which would have made Athos proud. 

Raoul and Raoul Segundo were like children to my cuz, so I insisted on dropping by Bragelonne whilst the Gascon did whatever it was that he did in the service of the Italian. I found Bragelonne deserted but functional, the domestics must have been trained by Grimaud to keep the place running like a Swiss clock. The rooms held a suspicious but, in retrospect, unsurprising scent of nymph, and the Greco-Roman ex-boyfriend still looked delightful in the rose garden. There was no sign of the Grigori and none of the servants knew where M. le comte had gotten himself to. I hastened to interrogate the parrot.

“I love Aramis!”

“Tell me something I _don’t_ know, you scurvy bird!”

“Down with Mazarin!”

“Sweet baby Jesus and his Mother in Blue! Are you trying to get your master killed?”

“Hera’s cunt!”

This wasn’t getting me anywhere. 

Upon return to Paris, I learned that we were to join the very man whom Aramis instructed me to throttle, and to head with him to England. I vacillated between the two commands. On the one hand, it would have been nice to be a baron. On the other hand, Aramis usually had good reasons for wanting people throttled. But then it got _cold_ and the rain… oh, the rain was wetter in England, I was sure of it. After a while, I sort of forgot what we were even doing in Cromwell’s camp and d’Artagnan would now and again have to whisper sweet nothings of “Barony!” into my ears, to which I would reply “Oh yes” and then crush some poor sod’s skull with my fist.

Oddly, I found crushing people’s skulls more invigorating than ever before. 

And then, one dawn, after d’Artagnan explained to me that the Highlanders have been bought and the King of the Britons would soon be sold, I sat upon my steed, opened my eyes and through the fog of Albion beheld an unexpected sight: Athos and Aramis in the retinue of the besieged sovereign.

I touched d’Artagnan on his shoulder and pointed our friends out in the melee. A roundhead had just fallen upon Aramis’ sword, while Athos, seemingly not wishing to bloody his blade with the blood of the English, used the butt of his pistol to bring down his opponent.

“They will get themselves killed!” d’Artagnan muttered.

I was more concerned they would _fail_ to get themselves killed and draw unwanted attention by that fact. 

At this precise moment, the smarmy Mordaunt opened fire upon the man we recognized as Lord Winter - the brother-in-law of that demon-witch we beheaded a few decades prior and the memory of which still made Athos’ furrow his immaculate brow with regret. Aramis had aimed his pistol at the avenging menace, but it was as if a black wing had passed over his barrel, extinguishing the flint before it could fire. In the confusion that followed, I sprung myself upon Aramis, knowing that if d’Artagnan had forestalled me, his blood would have flowed into the Tyne.

I wrapped my hands around the revenant’s wrists, immobilizing him, while Athos, ever attuned to his flittermouse’s distress and driven to distraction, managed to get himself overpowered by the Gascon. I saw Athos’ sword fall to the ground as Aramis pronounced “I am your prisoner,” with a voice so detached that I was not sure he had recognized me. 

Milady’s son flared his nostrils at our seeming good fortune and it slowly dawned on me why Aramis had pretended not to know me. With the King securely detained, there was nothing keeping us from transporting our “prisoners” to our house at Newcastle, kindly provided by his Puritan Roundheadedness, General Cromwell himself.

We conducted Athos and Aramis to the dwelling in perfect silence and allowed them to enter first. I saw them exchange a look, then Athos’ hand briefly lingered against the back of Aramis’, followed by the revenant’s fingers alighting on his lover’s back as he ushered him ahead, and I frowned. They were back together, alright, but why in England? Did they even know what they were doing there - for in their countenance there appeared an almost somnambulistic state - or were the gods once again taking the piss at their expense?

D’Artagnan and I exchanged scarce words before entering the house ourselves. Our prisoners startled and Athos’ visage became markedly despondent. I was uncertain whether this emotional upheaval was due to the ruined enterprise to which we found them party, or whether it was more a result of our interrupting what I was certain was some lewd act or another, judging by the way Aramis wiped his hand on the couch where they both sat. Indeed, I was taken back in my mind to centuries earlier - recalling the circumstances of our first meeting. I looked from one of them the other, shaking my head barely, for I couldn’t very well tell the two of them to get a grip in front of our mortal companion.

Athos drew up his collar, Aramis licked his teeth, and I rolled my eyes. This was going to be a very awkward day, indeed.

***

**Newcastle, January 1649**

It was d’Artagnan who, with his usual perspicacity and astuteness, guessed the reason for Athos’ momentary despondency and for the glare I had sent his way as he entered our prison chamber without knocking. He informed us that he and Porthos had been despatched by Mazarin to accompany Mordaunt and join Cromwell. They had been as surprised to find us on the battlefield, on the side of the enemy, as we had been surprised to find them. I could practically feel Tyche’s breath as she giggled with glee, entwining our paths and our fates in the most inconvenient way possible. Porthos wouldn’t care, but d’Artagnan knew that we had left Paris seven months ago. If he asked what we had been doing all this time, we would have to lie and pretend we had been with the king all along, and I knew how painfully lies burned Athos’ tender lips. 

Beside me, Athos stirred, and I could hear him do some very quick thinking. D’Artagnan and Porthos were Mazarinists and Roundheads, and they were in league with Mordaunt, whom – as I reminded them gently – I had advised them to strangle.

“There is a certain fatality to it,” d’Artagnan summed up our predicament, shrewd and insightful as ever.

Athos took up the cue. “Yes, you are right, d'Artagnan, a fatality that will separate and ruin us! So, my dear Aramis, say no more about it and let us prepare to submit to destiny,” he proclaimed with Hellenic flourish and pressed my hand. I managed not to roll my eyes and flash my fangs at the thought of Tyche meddling in our affairs again. I was sick of the old gods and their interfering ways. Had I mentioned that yet?

In spite of everything, I had to admire Athos’ skill with which he manoeuvred d’Artagnan into a position where the Gascon would have to submit to his will once again. “What side you are on? Behold for what end the wretched Mazarin has made use of you. Do you know in what crime you are today engaged? In the capture of a king, his degradation and his _murder_.” Athos almost hissed the last word, and I curled my lip in disgust, boring my gaze into d’Artagnan as if intent on piercing his skull with my glare. “Why else is the king taken prisoner?” Athos continued his sermon, brushing away the feeble protest d’Artagnan had voiced. “They will kill him, you may be sure of it.”

For a moment, the Gascon struggled, thrashing around like a fish that had been pulled onto dry land. He sought for excuses and justifications; he invoked ‘orders’ and ‘oaths to obey’; he attempted to put Athos and me at a disadvantage by implying that, unlike himself, we represented no worthy cause.

But my godling was too skilled a duellist to permit the whelp to force him into a corner. “On the contrary: the most sacred cause in the world,” Athos said. “The cause of misfortune, of religion, royalty. A friend, a wife, a daughter have done us the honour to call us to their aid. We have served them to the best of our poor means.” I glanced at him from the side, I couldn’t stop myself. He had galloped too far on the stallion of eloquence, for surely even the most benevolent of casuists would find it difficult to argue that the seven months we spent fucking each other’s brains out in a London tavern had been the best we could do to advance Queen Henrietta’s cause. I felt Athos’ breath catch for a second, but his self-control didn’t falter and he delivered the final thrust with a magnificent flourish: “You may see matters differently, d’Artagnan, and think otherwise. I will not attempt to argue with you, but I do blame you.”

Ah! No, I was quite mistaken. For even as d’Artagnan attempted to parry by vehemently denying any responsibility for his association with the Italian _stronzo_ , the wart-faced upstart, and Milady’s bastard, Athos attacked once again, and this time the thrust was fatal: “You, d’Artagnan, a man sprung from the ancient nobility of France, bearing an honourable name, carrying a good sword, have helped to give up a king to beer-sellers, shopkeepers, and wagoners. Ah! D’Artagnan!” he exclaimed, his voice infused with infinite sadness brought about by the image of plebeian hands besmirching a monarch, “perhaps you have done your duty as a soldier, but as a gentleman, I say that you are very culpable.”

At a loss for words, d’Artagnan was chewing the stalk of a flower, unable to reply and thoroughly uncomfortable, for when he turned from Athos’ eyes, he encountered mine. To my surprise (and eliciting my grudging respect), he continued to argue, even though it had long become clear that he had fallen and was writhing on the ground in a pool of his own blood (metaphorically speaking, alas). “The sentiments you air are certainly fine, so fine that they are superhuman,” d’Artagnan told Athos, once again exhibiting his innate and often amusing knack for spotting the truth without recognising it for what it was.

Athos had had about enough. He cut the argument short by referring to d’Artagnan as his son (the deviant) and reminding him that we were his prisoners and were to be treated as such (the double deviant).

Here, I judged it right to interfere. I pointed out that d’Artagnan would soon have the pleasure to see us hanged or shot, for one look at Mordaunt had been enough to establish that we were doomed. But, I added in reassuring, albeit mournful, tones, for I did not want to alarm our friends unduly, “We shall do you honour in our dying. As for myself, I shall be proud to face the bullets, or even the rope, in company with you, Athos, for you have never seemed to me so grand as you are today.”

The corner of Athos’ mouth twitched as he clung to his self-control, and I saw Porthos roll his eyes.

“You are free to escape this prison,” d’Artagnan told us.

“We will only run if you run with us, dearest friends” Athos insisted.

“MORDAUNT!”

The adversary had arrived. Through the grated window, we saw him coming towards the house at full gallop, bloodlust steaming off him in heady clouds. At once, d’Artagnan rushed out of the room, commanding Porthos to stay behind and only come out at his sign.

The three of us exchanged looks. We could hear every word spoken outside, as d’Artagnan engaged in a battle of wits with the avenger, the outcome of which would decide if we lived or… lived.

“Good thing Grimaud hasn’t unpacked yet,” Athos muttered.

I looked at him. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“You must be very disappointed. I’m sure you were very much looking forward to us both being imprisoned together. We’ve never done that before.”

Porthos cleared his throat very loudly, turned on his heel and pressed his ear to the door, listening intently to the conversation without. “D’Artagnan’s going to kill him,” he rumbled. “We will be free in a minute.”

Athos smiled and leaned in, brushing his mouth against my hair. “I _would_ have enjoyed it,” he murmured, and the sound of his voice sparked my loins to life again. I shifted in my seat, glad that Porthos had his back resolutely turned on us.

A knock at the door: the awaited signal. Porthos tore the door open and rushed out, and Athos and I moved at the same time, smashing our lips into each other painfully. His tongue slipped in between my teeth and I sucked it in greedily. He seized my hand and shoved it into his crotch, where I found him as hard as he had been before the rude interruption. “Finish what you started,” he growled, fucking himself against my palm.

“You’ll be uncomfortable,” I chided him, keeping up a slow, gentle pace – too gentle to bring him to completion, especially through his clothes. “We’ll be in the saddle any moment now, riding away from here.”

“You realise d’Artagnan and Porthos are coming with us?” he teased me with a smile; meanwhile, his cock pressed itself persistently into my hand through his breeches.

I grimaced. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, I think I’ve made sure of that,” he whispered and bit my earlobe.

“You filthy deviant,” I murmured and snaked my hand into his breeches, closing my fingers around the full, swollen flesh of his cock.

Outside, the voices grew louder as the argument became more heated. We were valuable prisoners: two Knights of the Garter with whom d’Artagnan intended to make his fortune, as he claimed, unwilling to give us up. Mordaunt offered him to buy us and pay the sum from Cromwell’s own coffers, and Athos groaned as I sucked in his lower lip, sliding my thumb over the wet tip of his cock. “Harder,” he panted into my mouth, his hips jerking frantically, his fingers digging into my arm. “Oh, fuck, Aramis.” His voice broke and a loud moan tore from his throat, which I caught in my mouth. “So good.” He tilted his head back and blinked against the pale winter light streaming in through the window.

I grinned and nipped playfully at his throat. “The window is barred,” I whispered against that column of flesh inside which blood rushed with the speed of a glacial river. “Does that turn you on, Athos? To know that this is our prison cell?”

“Aramis-”

“We are locked up together,” I continued, licking and nibbling at his throat. “There are guards at the door.” In fact, we heard a commotion, for d’Artagnan and Mordaunt had finally struck a bargain, and the foe had ridden away to get the written order from Cromwell that would entitle him to Athos’ person and mine, while our friends began to make hectic preparations for our departure.

D’Artagnan’s voice floated in from the hall. “Porthos, not a syllable to either of our friends of what you have heard. It is unnecessary for them to know the service we are going to render them.”

“Did you hear that?” Athos panted. “You won’t have to thank d’Artagnan for giving us our freedom.”

“Good.” I let my fangs drop and grazed the tender skin that stretched over his distended vein, enough to leave a red mark, not enough to cause blood to surge forth. Athos groaned and bucked into my hand, spilling himself with a choked curse. I held his cock gently until it stopped throbbing and then I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped him clean as thoroughly as I could. “I believe I would have enjoyed imprisonment,” I said, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips.

“Mmhm…” He kissed me back, buttoning himself up with nimble fingers.

Outside, we heard a tune being whistled, and we drove apart just in time. The door opened, d’Artagnan stepped in and, seemingly without noticing our stony expressions and rigid postures, addressed my flushed, panting godling in commanding tones - the way he used to do in the old days when he was our esteemed general without whose guidance we would have been hopelessly lost: “My dear Athos, I have reflected on your arguments and I am convinced. I am sorry to have had anything to do with Mazarin and Cromwell. I have resolved to escape with you. Your swords are in the corner, don't forget them.” He picked Porthos’ purse from the mantlepiece while we continued to stare at him, struggling to keep our breaths level. 

“Is there anything to be so surprised at?” d’Artagnan said. “I was blind; Athos has made me see, that’s all. Come here.”

We stood – Athos stepping behind me so that his damp crotch was hidden from d’Artagnan’s view – and walked over to our saviour, who explained the logistics of our escape to us, and gave us the signal: ‘Jesus Seigneur.’

Athos pinched my hand. “Very good,” I said, summarising d’Artagnan’s brilliant plan. “At the cry ‘Jesus Seigneur’ we dash out, upset all that stands in our way, run to our horses, jump into our saddles, spur them. Is that all?”

“Exactly.”

“See, Aramis, it is as I have always told you,” my eternal deviant said, gazing at the Gascon full of admiration. “D’Artagnan is first amongst us all.”

***

**Newcastle - London, January 1649**

D’Artagnan _was_ the first among us. The first among us to concoct any kind of a tangible plan for rescuing the King. As I write this, centuries stand between the events that I’m describing and my current circumstance, and so I have no reason to obfuscate, for our Audience is as astute as the chyortik himself in gleaning what afflicts us. I could no more recall the details of those days to you than I could recall the thirty years we spent on Olympus. Suffice to say -

We failed. We floundered. We, as Alex wrote, “kept to our roles.” We exchanged glances, we retired early, we stayed in bed late, we whispered words of love and misapprehension into each other’s opened mouths.

“How does he know I was a Knight of Malta?”

“Shh, flittermouse, don’t speak.”

My hand was more calloused from gripping Aramis’ cock than from handling a sword.

D’Artagnan’s first plan to rescue the King had failed when Mordaunt once again arrived at the most inopportune moment and interrupted our game of lansquenet with Captain Groslow (a man who rather lived up to his ungainly name). It was a shame: Aramis was really looking forward to slaughtering those Englishmen, and as for myself, I was willing to forego my newfound Buddhism for a royal cause.

“ _Must_ I propitiate Tyche with my own cock to get her to stop leading Mordaunt by his nose to us at every turn!” Aramis exploded as we found ourselves on the road and chased once more.

“It wasn’t Tyche, Aramis,” I breathed out and spurred on my horse. “It was Eris.”

I had forgotten to tell him the entire extent of my dream of Aphrodite. Forgotten, or rather, did not want to believe it. Besides, there were more pressing matters to attend, like Scottish treason. But there was no denying it anymore - Mordaunt’s knack for foiling each one of our plans was no mere coincidence. He had Discord on his side and she was out for my blood. 

Aramis snarled and dug his fingers into the reins. I suspected correctly that we’d have words about my sister later.

We were headed to London again, London - that city that as I claimed (quite honestly) I could navigate with my eyes closed (if only by the unpleasant scents reaching my nose). Logically, when d’Artagnan inquired as to the lodgings, I thought nothing of suggesting the Bedford Tavern again.

“What do you say to it, Aramis?” I asked with a hidden leer.

“Why, the idea of taking quarters with Señor Perez seems to me very reasonable,” my flittermouse replied, “and for my part I agree to it. We will invoke the remembrance of that poor de Winter, for whom he seemed to have a great regard; we will tell him that we have come as amateurs to see what is going on; we will spend with him a guinea each per day; and I think that by taking all these precautions we can be quite undisturbed."

Quite as undisturbed as we had been there earlier for the previous seven months. We exchanged another look and my loins twitched in my saddle. Porthos cast me a suspicious glance and shook his head. I admired his sagaciousness in detecting my inappropriate erections.

It was then that our clever Gascon friend reminded us that to be undisturbed and undetected we needed to change our attire. I almost reminded Aramis of how ravishing he looked in a lady’s bodice, but bit my lips before causing him to lose his composure and spill d’Artagnan’s blood once and for all. We could not, at this stage and time, afford losing the one man who was actually attempting to do the thinking for the rest of us.

It was fortuitous then that prior to our departure for Newcastle, Aramis had bedeviled the good Señor Perez, who welcomed us back with opened arms, completely unaware that we were the men responsible for such damage to his furniture and the loss of his less prurient clientele for the larger part of the previous year.

Having selected and changed into our Puritan garbs, disaster struck. D’Artagnan had suggested the unthinkable.

“We must cut off our hair, that the populace may not insult us.”

Aramis whimpered and blanched. He pouted, he scowled at me like a wounded animal, for a moment, I could have sworn he actually prayed (though I do not know to what deity). I wasn’t going to jeer at and wheedle him like a child in front of others present, but he certainly looked upon me as Caesar upon Brutus when I led by example and ordered Grimaud to cut my own hair first. Taking my lead, Porthos allowed Mousqueton to take the shears to his own thick, coarse head of hair. As for d’Artagnan, he required no barber, but rather gave himself the haircut he desired, which was apparently modeled after the heads engraved upon medals from the time of Francis I and Charles IX.

At last, Aramis capitulated and allowed Grimaud to do the unimaginable. Blaisois, though perfectly willing, could not be trusted with such a delicate task. As Aramis shut his eyes in horror, I signed to my Grigori that if he even thought about smiling I was going to touch a vagina _on purpose_ and then kill him myself.

I ran my fingers through my own hair as it curled against my neck. I had not worn it this short since the days of Rome, although I have thought the style of the French cavaliers in the seventeenth century a bit excessive. Still, I had gotten used to wearing my hair a certain length and my neck felt oddly naked and cold without it. Of course, it would grow back in a matter of weeks – my body striving to heal itself expeditiously no matter where the wound had been struck.

“We look hideous!” I emitted, thoughtlessly.

“And smack of the Puritan to a frightful extent,” my lover squeezed out through white lips.

I suggested that now that we were unrecognizable, we go into the city for a bit of reconnaissance, but quickly edited my proposal to take place in half an hour’s time, rather than immediately, once my eyes lingered upon Aramis’ face. As the door closed behind Porthos and d’Artagnan, whose plans we were continuing to follow in our attempts towards the rescue of King Charles, I turned back to Aramis and found him pale and stricken, lips and hands all atremble.

My own lips parted, but before a word of consolation could escape me, he turned away and hid his face in his hands.

“Don’t look at me, I’m hideous! You said so yourself!”

“Oh, flittermouse,” I sighed and placed my hands over the bones of his hips, attempting to make him face me.

“Oh, god, no!” he struggled against my hold. “Don’t turn me that way. Hang something over the mirror!”

“Who knew little flittermice could be so silly,” I whispered against his lobe, pressing my lips over the tendons of his neck where they met the cartilage of the shell of his delicate ear. “Sweet chyortik doesn’t need fancy curled locks to be the most beautiful chicklet of the flock.”

“You do but cajole me, count,” he struggled against my grasp in a futile attempt at escape, but my fingers held him surely. “You mock my despair and taunt my tears.”

I laughed into the back of his neck.

“Chertyonok never cries,” I reminded him. “Aramis, come, be a man. It’s only hair: another accessory without which your beauty stands the test of time, like your almond paste and glittering diamonds.”

“I suppose before long you will start quoting the dharma at me,” he bristled. “Delilah – you once called me! Who is the Delilah now?”

“I won’t betray you and leave you at your enemies’ mercy, my sweet Samson,” my lips trailed over his neck and I turned his face towards mine. Indeed, his eyes glistened as if he was on the verge of tears. I frowned, stunned by the depths of this apparent insecurity. “Aramis, tell me you were more upset than this when I died.”

“You monster!” he slapped me across the face and blood pooled in my loins. “How dare you speak to me that way?”

“That’s the spirited boy I love.” My pulse quickened and I pulled him against me, pressing our lips together, tasting the rage in his kiss with my tongue. His heart beat against my chest like the flapping wings of a bat.

“You will never die again, will never go where I cannot follow,” he exhaled against my neck as I held him tight to me. At least, he seemed distracted enough from his coiffure and I smiled into his shorn hair as his fangs traced over the veins, without breaking my skin. “You must never say such things to me, Athos. You do not know the pain of losing you. I won’t survive it again.”

“Aramis,” I sighed and sank down to my knees before him. 

“Oh, god… don’t!” His hand clutched at my own shorn curls, holding me steady. “Not the blasted mirror!” It appeared in my desire to please him, I had exposed the offending reflective surface to his sight again.

“Stay still, Aramis,” I whispered, rubbing my face against the bulge in his breeches. “You should watch yourself in there,” I nodded towards the mirror. “You will see, my love, how beautiful you still are. How beautiful you will always be.”

I pressed an open mouthed kiss against the outline of his cock as it strained in the material. He grasped my shoulder and gasped my name.

“Watch, Aramis,” I said, pulling him closer to myself, closer to the mirror behind me. He tore his eyes from my face and lifted them over my head. “Good boy.” I let my hot breath ghost over the growing bulge. My fingers dove underneath the layers of his doublet and chemise, pressing into his taut flesh. “My beautiful boy.”

“I don’t even recognize myself,” he shook his head with an air of desperation.

“I’m not doing my job then,” I pressed my lips to his navel, letting my tongue dip into it, before licking over the trail of dark hair leading towards his groin. I freed him from the confines of his breeches, running my thumb and tongue along the length as it twitched in my grasp. “It’s definitely still you,” I murmured into the hot, velvety skin. “Feels like you,” I whispered against the head, swirling my tongue around the slit, “Tastes like you.” I lapped at the tip where a bead of liquid sat like a precious stone.

“What do I taste like to you?” he asked, eyes turned from the mirror towards my face. “Tell me, Athos.”

I narrowed my eyes in concentration and drew my tongue down the shaft and into the crease between his balls while he bucked towards me. “Hm…” I closed my eyes and drew my lips down over his swollen cock. I sank down until my nose lay buried in the coarse hairs of his groin and then I inhaled and felt the head of his cock slide against the back of my throat, as I tried to take him all the way in.

“ _Gods._ ”

I smiled complacently as I pulled back up and licked him up and down, savoring the bouquet of his cock.

“Leather,” I said, tongue teasing at a bulging vein. “Metal.”

“Lovely.”

“Rage,” I continued. “Barely tethered rage. Blood upon steel. Horse hooves in the sodden earth. Oakwood. Cedarwood. Smoke of a thousand fires.”

“That’s very precise,” he grinned down at me.

“You taste of salt and sweat and come,” I breathed out, sucking him down again and coming up once more for air. “You taste like the earth after summer rains. Like the air after a dozen thunderstorms. You taste of _me_. You taste _mine_.” One of my hands rested on the small of his back, while the other clutched at the back of his thigh, pulling him in deeper. He shuddered against me, his cock pulsated between my lips, against my tongue, and I swallowed him down greedily.

He whimpered and called out my name, his hands clutching at what was left of my hair, brushing damp curls away from my forehead.

“You taste beautiful to me,” I pressed a hot kiss to his rapidly softening cock. 

He sank down to his knees next to me, pressing his face into the crook of my neck and I stroked my hands up and down his back. “I hate England,” he mumbled.

“I know, flittermouse,” I kissed the shell of his exposed ear. “I know.”


	2. Chapter 2

**London, January 1649**

For the first fourteen years of my acquaintance with Athos, I had not seen hide nor hair of his old gods. Was that because we had spent those years at the very borders of Christian Europe, which had its own pagan pantheon? The Hellenic deities had never taken hold in the beliefs of peoples who worshipped their own gods of thunder, their own goddesses of fertility and love. The memories of the banished Slavic idols had still been fresh at the turn of the fifteenth century, and Athos’ family had never captured the imagination of the populace.

Things had changed by the time the seventeenth century rolled along. Greek deities were invoked at every turn; they made their appearance in poetry, literature and theatre, and even a distinctly non-scholarly mind like that of d’Artagnan was full of stories of Hellenic gods and heroes. No wonder Eris found it so easy to slip into the dreams of men of that era, for they were susceptible to her Achaean charm.

When Athos confessed to me that Discord had been paying nightly visits to Mordaunt, I trembled with rage. “You should have let me kill him when I had the chance, Athos!” I gritted out. However, he looked so stricken when I started to reprimand him that I felt guilty immediately and softened my tone. “Well, at least it’s not _your_ head she’s been invading.” I looked at him, attempting to read the answer in his face. “She hasn’t, has she?”

“No,” he shook his head, and I thought I had seen a faint blush blossom in his cheeks. “She hasn’t. I would tell you, Aramis. I… have learned my lesson,” he added softly.

“Good.” For a moment, we sat in silence. Then, Athos sighed.

“She… visits him in the guise of his mother.”

“The demon-witch?” I extended my fangs at the memory of that night. The rage, the revenge, the bloodlust. The _blood_. A woman’s blood; a human’s blood. The blood we spilled to prevent worse evils.

We should have known that the Greek tragedy would unfold despite our effort to change destiny. Milady had been a purveyor of death, and she had bequeathed her unholy powers to her son, who would succeed where she had failed. Before long, a murder would be committed, and blood would be spilled to avenge the mother’s death and to propitiate the Goddess of Discord and her warlike brother. Athos, who had been an adherent of Ares for millennia, had stopped bringing his brother the sacrifices to which the God of War had been accustomed. My memories of Ares were vague – I remembered petting a large black dog who lolloped in hip-tall asphodel – and he appeared an easy-going fellow, but he was still a belligerent deity and his hunger was great.

Blood would be spilled one day soon; I could smell it already. The death of de Winter had been just the beginning, and it was no coincidence that my pistol had failed me the moment I was about to shoot Mordaunt. Eris had taken him under her wings, and she poisoned his brain and pushed him into our path. His heart, his mind, his soul teemed with thoughts of revenge like a cadaver teems with maggots. They crawled through his brain and carved holes into it, until nothing was left in his skull but one thought, one thought only: KILL.

If I could be certain that it would be d’Artagnan whom the avenger’s sword would slay, I would enjoy my front seat in the amphitheatre – nay, I would even gladly take up the part of the Greek chorus. But I had seen the red gleam in Mordaunt’s eye. The Goddess of Discord didn’t seek a quarrel with the Gascon. D’Artagnan was a favourite of the gods, and it was an eternal mystery why.

“Are you sure Tyche hasn’t taken a human lover?” I heard myself ask. “What does she look like when she manifests?”

Athos startled. “She carries a cornucopia,” he said. “Or a ship’s rudder. Why?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head, got up and walked to the door. In the room across the hall, d’Artagnan and Porthos were sitting at a card table. Porthos nodded curtly when he spotted me, while d’Artagnan raised his eyebrows in astonishment.

“Are you going to bed already? It’s barely nine o’clock.”

I smiled at him. “I’m afraid M. le comte and I got into the habit of retiring early while we were your prisoners on our way here,” I said. “After pretending he was trembling with fever for days on end, the count has now started to feel truly feverish. And my own health is not very robust in these climes.”

“Life in the royalist camp must have been tough for a man like you, my dear friend,” d’Artagnan said. “In your monastery, you are used to a softer and warmer bed than a cot in a tent. As you told me yourself: you are growing old.”

“Indeed. I see you understand my constitution perfectly, my dear d’Artagnan.” I closed the door, bolted it and turned around and encountered my lover’s dark gaze. He was shaking his head, but his mouth was smiling.

“One day, he will notice.”

“He didn’t even notice that night when he followed us into our chamber as we were going to bed,” I said. “He accepted that I had to help you out of your clothes to keep up pretences in front of Groslow.” I stood by him and took his hand in mine. “How is your fever, count? My, my, but your pulse is racing.”

Athos turned his head and pressed his hot mouth into my stomach. “I don’t think I can sleep,” he confessed in a voice that shot straight to my heart. “The king will be tried tomorrow.” I put my hand on his short hair; so soft and silky still, despite its crude cut. I was getting used to the way his face looked now that it was no longer framed by those long dark locks. His eyes were even larger, deeper, more liquid, and the lines of his temples, cheekbones and jaw stood out in their exquisite beauty. He resembled the statue of a Grecian god more than ever. A _ἥρως ἀγαϑός_ , an _ἀγαϑὸς δαίμων_ , Agathodaemon, the companion of Tyche Agathe…

I gritted my teeth. The old gods, _always_ the old gods. Why had they guided our steps to London? To the place where Athos had slain a man and stolen his title and life. De Winter, who had slain his sister-in-law and stolen her son’s title and life, had lain slaughtered by the nephew’s hand under the blood moon. The circle of revenge had been completed. Had the gods the same in store for Athos? Was that the sacrifice they demanded?

For that they demanded a sacrifice, I didn’t doubt for a second. They always did. It was not Poseidon this time; slaying a horse would not suffice. If it was human blood they craved, I was perfectly willing to slit d’Artagnan’s throat and leave him in a pool of his blood without drinking from him. But I sensed that their craving was greater than that. It was the blood of a creature of the higher order that would have to be spilled; my own or that of Athos. Nothing less would satiate the Goddess of Discord.

Athos’ breath scorched me through the layers of clothes. I had shed my new dark-blue cloak that I had chosen as my disguise because I could conceal my sword beneath it. Athos was still wearing his black coat that gave him the appearance of a respectable citizen, and suddenly, it was repulsive to me. My hand slid off his head and down his shoulder, to his throat, where my fingers encountered the buttons of his collar. “Take this off,” I whispered. Athos’ shoulders shook as he exhaled harshly, and he began to undo the buttons. He raised his head and locked his gaze with mine, and his parted lips glistened with the promise of pleasure. His coat fell to the floor, then his shirt, and then he stood, his chest heaving with laboured breaths, almost brushing against mine.

“Aramis,” he whispered. His blood throbbed in his neck, his throat, it pulsed in his lips and – oh, yes, in his cock. “You’re beautiful.” He raised his hand and cupped my face, caressing my cheek, the corner of my mouth, with his thumb.

“Let me drink your blood,” I looked him in the eyes and saw them widen, darken, as lust washed over him.

“It’s yours.” His voice was barely more than a breath, and he pressed the inside of his wrist against my mouth. I parted my lips over it and his pulse heaved and leapt, as if his blood was desperate to spill itself into my mouth. It was _mine_. The gods had no claim to it. _Discord_ had no claim to it. It was mine and mine alone, and I would drink all of it, _never cease drinking it_ , if it meant that it was safe from _them_.

“Properly,” I said. I put my hands on his hips, the hot, supple flesh over the waistband of his breeches, and I walked him towards the bed. The mattress groaned under his weight, and I hovered above him, taking in every twitch of his lips, every flicker of lashes. Every throb of blood. His face was in full view – not obscured by a curtain of hair, mine or his, like it used to be in the past. Even though I was still wearing my clothes, we were more naked than ever before, since a veil had been lifted from both our faces.

Athos licked his lips and tipped his head back, presenting his bare throat to me. “Take it.” His mellifluous voice, like softest velvet, like sweetest honey. Its vibrations ghosted over my skin even after the sound of the words had faded away. “Take it all,” he murmured when my mouth brushed against the soft skin in the hidden corner below the line of his jaw. “Put me to sleep…”

“ _Yes._ ” I extended my fangs and he sighed. His hand on my back, gripping the fabric of my shirt. The other hand on the nape of my neck, pulling me closer, nails grazing over the naked skin there, and I shuddered and gasped into his skin. His fingers in my hair, and I could feel them more intimately than ever before as they crawled along the curve of my skull. Beneath me, his thighs parted; he bent his knee and pulled me in, against him, hooking his leg around mine. The vein beneath my lips pulsated painfully and I licked it, dragged the flat of my tongue over the thin membrane that separated my mouth from _ichor pure_.

“I will kill him for you,” I vowed and sank my teeth into the distended vessel that carried the nectar of the gods.

Athos’ head rolled in the pillow. “I know, kitten” he sighed. I felt his throat, his vein, vibrate as he spoke, and I twisted my neck and dived in more deeply, driving my fangs into the soft skin and taut ligaments of his neck, tearing through his flesh with ease; beneath me, he bucked and moaned. His cock burned like a white-hot steel rod into my abdomen, his blood exploded on my tongue. Liquid light poured down my throat, spiced with the salt of his sweat. A cornucopia of life, a well that would never run dry. I could feel divine energy surge through him as his veins began to replenish themselves, and I sucked harder, my mouth clamped tightly to his neck as not to lose one precious drop. Flashes of light blasted behind my closed eyelids, flashes of lust blasted in my loins, and my hips slammed into him. Athos’ hand on my arse, pulling me in with fingers like barbed claws. Moans, so soft at first, increasingly harsher, more desperate, vibrated on his lips and in the wound in his neck.

I lifted my head briefly and saw the rich, thick liquid spurt forth over the pale skin. “More?”

He pulled my head back down. “Yeah…”

His body was growing heavy against mine, even though it was I who lay atop him. Drained of blood, the long limbs went slack. His hand slipped off the back of my neck, his legs fell open, the shuddering muscles in his stomach softened. Yet his cock was as hard as before; harder, perhaps, for that was where all his blood boiled that did not gush into my mouth. His hips jerked up, his body jolted into mine, and the heat churning in my groin exploded, forcing my release out of me in sharp spasms. Athos groaned. “More,” he choked out.

“Always.”

“Don’t stop.”

“Never.” _Never, never, never_. His pulse thudded in my mouth, his heartbeat guided mine, his skin, his sweat, his virility, his arousal, _he_. Athos.

***

It was a good thing that I had drained him of his lifeforce, for even so Athos had spent a restless night and was up at the brink of dawn. The day of the trial. The day when the plebs were to sit in judgment over their king, a son of the House of Stuart, a descendant of the Bretons. Was this the reason why Athos was so desperate to save the king? Because Charles Stuart was a distant relative of Marie by long-diluted Ondine blood? The Stuarts had not reaffirmed the bond with the goddesses and gods of air and water. Had Charles’ family line maintained their ties with the Ondines, he would not have found himself in this predicament. But they had strayed away, fancying themselves invincible, and the gods had punished their hubris.

The trial, then. Athos’ face, betraying all those emotions which Charles I, possessing more self-control, had banished from his own. Distraught by the sight of Athos’ agitation, d’Artagnan cast fearful glances back over his shoulder, for the Gascon was accustomed to seeing my idol in full possession of coolness and calm. Mordaunt, his sword bare, his eyes reflecting Olympic fire that Eris had ignited in his mind, staring at the king like an insolent dog. Porthos’ attempts and mine to distract Athos from the agony that tore his tender soul apart by frivolous talk of fashion and women. The act of accusation, Athos’ deadly pallor, for never till then had a more brutal accusation or meaner insults tarnished kingly majesty. Charles Stuart listened with lofty scorn, but as to Athos –

As to Athos, his face aflame, his fists clenched, his lips bitten till they bled, he sat there foaming with rage at that endless parliamentary insult and that long-enduring royal patience. His inflexible arm and steadfast heart had given place to a trembling hand and a body shaken by excitement. Under the cover of my cloak, I attempted to hold his hand in mine to keep him anchored, but he didn’t appear to notice me. The moment the judge concluded ‘in the name of the English people’, Athos got swept up in a tidal wave of rage that robbed him of his rational faculties. Without any regard for his own safety or ours, he leapt upon the bench and, with outstretched hand and quite out of his mind, assailed the accuser in a voice that brought to mind his Thunderous Father: “YOU LIE!”

Unable to rein him in, I leapt upon the bench likewise, cocked my horse pistol under the shield of my cloak and pointed it at Mordaunt, whose eyes were gleaming red and who spat orders to have us shot. I’d shoot him first, and this time Discord’s wings would not extinguish the flint. But d’Artagnan jumped over the back of his bench and pulled Athos down, and Porthos pushed a path free through the seething throng, through which we made good our escape.

We didn’t get far. For, once he had regained composure, Athos insisted we stayed until the judgment was pronounced. And so we waited. We watched the king being led out. We saw him being jeered at and insulted by the populace. We saw a mean creature bloated from swine flesh and ale spit in the monarch’s face. Athos grasped his dagger, but d’Artagnan stopped him. “Wait!”

We followed the butcher into an alley. Once he had reached the bank of the river, we stopped him. Athos, pale as a ghost, spoke to him in English the words that d’Artagnan dictated in French. “You are a coward. You have insulted a defenceless man. You have befouled the face of your king. You must die.”

The butcher fell like an ox under the mighty blow of Porthos’ terrible fist which crashed upon his skull like Hephaestus’ own hammer. A pool of blood oozed into the sludge under our feet, and I took a step backwards, for I had little fancy for filthying my boots with that inferior English slop. I raised my eyes to heaven, and my lips moved in silent prayer, despite the fact that I knew even then that it was in vain. The cadaver at our feet had been barely a man; it had been an animal that had learned to walk on its hind legs and emit grunts that resembled human speech. Even though blood had been spilled, as I always knew it would be, it was not the blood the gods wanted. Their thirst remained unquenched, their hunger unstilled. I looked at Athos’ pale face, heard him mechanically repeat the words d’Artagnan spoke, and I trembled.

“Justice is done,” Porthos said, wiping his forehead.

“And now,” d'Artagnan told Athos, pressing his hand and making him a solemn vow, bound by the blood in which they both stood. “Entertain no further doubts about me; I undertake all that concerns the king.”

***

Back in our room in the Bedford Tavern, Athos sank to his knees by the window, raising his bloodless face and his bright eyes to the stygian skies in a wordless plea for mercy. The wine he had imbibed while we three were having dinner (for he hadn’t eaten anything), the promises d’Artagnan made him, whose fertile mind was already coming up with plans to save the king, had seemed to revive him and restore his spirits, but the recovery turned out to have been temporary. Alone with me, he drowned in deepest despondency, and I felt pain radiate from him and seep through the pores of his skin.

“Athos,” I addressed him gently and placed my hand on the back of his neck. He flinched as if my touch caused him pain rather than comfort, and I recoiled in horror. My own mind was fogging up with fear; horrible, clogging terror that dug its icy claws into my heart. I had seen Athos in that state before. I had seen him drift away from me two hundred years ago on Rhodes, when I had not understood what was happening to him until it was too late and he got sucked into the marine abyss. Twenty years ago, I had seen him slip from my grasp and sink into the icy lake of his mind, and I had left him to drown.

Now, I knew the cause of his ailment. Eris had found a way to take hold of him again, even though she had not succeeded in claiming his body or penetrating his thoughts. If it was my love that cushioned his mind from her, I would bestow it on him abundantly. I would keep him safe in body and mind. Never again would I let him drown in icy waters.

I shed my cloak, my doublet, threw aside my arms and knelt behind him. As I snaked my arms around him and reached for his hands, I found them icy cold and clasped before his breast. For once, my fingers were warmer than his. “Athos,” I whispered with my mouth against his neck, where his short hair curled in sweat-soaked tendrils against the marble skin. 

Athos bent his head. For a second, I feared that he was flinching away from me. Then, I realised that he was presenting his neck to me, more naked and vulnerable than ever before. He was still and silent, barely breathing it seemed, and memories buoyed to the surface of my mind: of those days when his body used to beg, because he craved something that he found impossible to express in words. He wanted me to take him, to possess him; to do things to him for which he would never ask.

Before long, I had him bent over the table, fingers clutching at the edges and muscles bulging in his shoulders and back. His skin was glistening with sweat, his legs were spread wide open, and his hips were angled upward. My hands on his arse, kneading and scratching his flesh to make him hiss and groan with pain, but he didn’t. His silence was absolute and eerie, the way it had been all those centuries ago on Rhodes. I had used his razor on him then, to make him hurt and bleed, to tether him to the here and now through the pain that he craved. It had all been in vain. He had slipped away from me and drowned in Poseidon’s indigo realm.

“Athos,” I whispered, dipping my thumbs into his cleft to spread him open. He angled his hips even more and my cock twitched at the sight. It dragged along the inside of his thigh, hard and damp with anticipation that made my head spin. But not yet.

I sucked in two of my fingers and then thrust them into him. Athos groaned, a long, pained sound, but he pushed back into my touch, into my hand, onto my fingers that were working him open for my cock. Whatever mare had taken hold of his mind, his body still belonged to me. It throbbed around me; shudders ran up his thighs and made my hand tingle. He was so hot, scorching my flesh and my soul, and I rubbed myself against him as I fucked him with my hand. As I murmured soft words of encouragement and love into the tender skin below his shoulder blades, along his spine, at the nape of his neck. In spite of my efforts to anchor him, he was slipping away from me. His half-lidded eyes, his parted lips through which barely a sound escaped belonged to a man under a spell, and terror grabbed my heart again with icy fingers, for I feared that Discordia would find a way to slither inside his mind and poison him.

“Athos!” I said again, more sharply, and slapped his arse. He jerked up, the muscles around my fingers spasmed, and I slapped him again, until I saw a red flush appear on his white skin. I grabbed a fistful of his short hair and yanked his head back. “You’re mine!” I growled, shoving my hand into his cleft, burying two fingers inside him until he groaned and his knees buckled. I pushed at the table leg with my knee, and it scraped across the floor until we found ourselves face to face with the mirror. Athos’ eyes snapped open, his lips trembled, his lashes fluttered shut as a dull flush crept into his cheeks. In the mirror, I saw my nostrils flare. The heady scent that radiated from his skin dazed me; it dulled my senses and sharpened them at the same time.

“Open your eyes!” I told him, tugging at his hair again. I rubbed my groin against the back of his legs, into the crevice between his thighs, against the back of my own hand. He groaned, biting down on his lip until it turned white under the pressure of his teeth and then purple as blood burst through his abused skin. A droplet glistened, trembling on his lip with every breath he took, and its scent wafted over to me. A strange calm descended over me, the familiar calm of battle that always took possession of me when my blood had reached boiling point. All of a sudden, my head stopped spinning; the haze cleared, my senses sharpened. I watched Athos splayed on the table before me, I saw ripples running under his skin and erupt in goosebumps that raised the downy hairs on the back of his neck. I leaned in and blew a hot breath over them, and the serpentine line of his spine curved as he arched his back.

“What do you want?” I muttered into the kisses that I planted on his vertebrae. “Tell me!”

His mouth remained mute like his old Grigori. A sharp exhale of breath, not even a moan, trembled on his lips before he could catch it, but not one word followed. In the mirror I saw the reflection of his glittering eyes, and for a moment our gazes locked. His slipped away and I had to pull his hair again to force him to look at me. “No?” I whispered, as I pulled out my hand and rubbed my flat palm against the spot where he was opening up for me. “Don’t you want to talk to me, Athos? Well, then…”

I slapped his arse again, hard, and pressed my hand into the small of his back, pushing him down onto the table as I stepped aside briefly and picked up my handkerchief. In the next moment, I was behind him again, stretching out along his body to push the crumpled silk into his mouth. “Suit yourself,” I said and, looking him straight in the eyes in the mirror, pulled back my lips in a snarl to reveal my extending fangs. “Hold tight to the table.” I slapped him again, sharp enough to hurt my hand. “Don’t make me tie you up.”

A shudder ran through him from top to toe. A groan forced its way past the handkerchief, but I ignored it and dipped my hand into the alabaster jar. When I pulled it out, dripping oil on the table, on Athos’ flank, his back, the swell of his arse, I saw his eyes widen and then close in the mirror and I pulled at his hair again with my other hand. “Look at me!”

He opened his eyes obediently and met my gaze in the mirror. “Look at me while I-” I slipped my oiled finger inside, “while I get you ready for my cock.”

Athos’ nostrils flared as he attempted to gasp for air. His fingers scrambled over the edge of the table. I fucked him slowly with my fingers, in and out of the slick heat of his body, my own cock nestled against the inside of his thigh. When I withdrew my hand from him, Athos whimpered. I grabbed my cock with my oiled-up hand and slid it into my fist, and then-

Yanking his head back, my eyes on his face, his eyes huge and black and overbright, his flesh giving way as I pressed my cock inside him, stretching around me until I was fully sheathed, and his eyes, _his eyes_ , dark and liquid and-

I swallowed and stretched out atop him, my chest on his back and my mouth in his hair. Tracing the line of his ear with my tongue to feel him shiver. Nipping at his jaw with my teeth. “Look at me,” I whispered into the pulse point on his neck. “You’re _mine_.”

My fangs sprang forth and tore through his skin. My loins pushed forth and drove my cock into him. Beneath me, his body tensed and shuddered, his heart thundered within his ribcage, his blood surged into my mouth, and I took him and marked him and banished Discord from his thoughts with every shove of my hips.

“I love you.” I lifted my blood-stained mouth off his neck and looked him straight in the eyes in the mirror. His blood bubbled up from the wound and I lowered my mouth again, still looking at him. “Come for me,” I whispered before clamping my mouth to the fountain of blood again.

***

I never had to ask for him to give me exactly what I wanted, what I _needed_ , my demon understood me better that I did myself. Perhaps. The sting of his hand on me felt so good, I bit my lips to quell them from muttering “Please” and “Thank you.”

His fingers in my hair, the slide of his cock in and out of me, like a piston, like he had gone to war over the battlefield of my body. And perchance he did, a war with an invisible enemy, that I had been afraid to fight but Aramis would not let me lose.

“Look at me,” his breath scalding against my bare neck, “You’re _mine_.”

The gag, a shred of mercy in my mouth so that I would not have to say the words that would’ve come too easily. “Yes, I’m yours. Take me. Punish me. Don’t let her have me again.”

There, buried inside me, with his cock and his fangs sunken into my flesh, he somehow dragged me back from the stygian shores. He made me live again, if only to hear - “I love you. Come for me.” - and I did.

We both sank down to the floor, even though the bed was but a few paces away. He pulled his handkerchief out of my mouth, soaked with my saliva and sweat as he used it to wipe my forehead, rivulets of sweat still streaking down my back, my thighs, as I lay in his arms. My eyes slowly focused on his own and I smiled.

“Is it over? Can I have you back now?” he asked, his fingers trembling, the handkerchief falling between us.

“Thank you,” I whispered and kissed his eyelids, which fluttered beneath my lips. Like the petals of a tulip, just as I had once written to him, in the years when I had forgotten what it meant to love him. To fly this close to the sun and to be warmed by it, not burned. In such proximity to all that coiled, deadly power, I felt nothing but safety from those who would do me harm. 

“All is not lost,” he said. “We can still save the king.”

Indeed, d’Artagnan’s determination and Aramis’ sudden bout of optimism had seemed to have given me wings. I had undertaken to find us a way off these cursed isles, one way or another, which - until such time that we grew actual wings - would still have to rely upon the sea. Meanwhile, d’Artagnan had taken it upon himself to abduct or otherwise ensnare the executioner, the removal of whose personage could only aid in our enterprise. As for Aramis, he had declared himself the envoy to the King, so that His Majesty not thwart our last minute preparations for his abduction.

“And how, my sweet chyortik, do you propose to do that?” I asked, fiddling with the buttons of my somber and puritanical garments.

“By impersonating my good friend, the Bishop Juxon.”

“A man of seventy,” I raised my eyebrow.

“You often forget about my powers of persuasion.”

I pressed my hand to my heart and hung my head like a penitent, “Forgive me, my love. I am often blinded to your more diabolical proclivities.”

“And yet, you have yourself often been their beneficiary.” His teeth gently reached for my lower lip to nibble on it. “Ingrate.”

The Bishop’s sacerdotal robes would not be the last costume Aramis would wear in this, our final, attempt at king-snatching. Before the end of the day, d’Artagnan had managed not only to take the executioner and his assistant out of play, but also to get us all hired on to build the royal scaffold, under the guises of Master Tom Lowe (the role I was to play) and his three workmen companions.

It was with my own hands that I had dug the tunnel into Whitehall and right underneath the tiles of the King’s prison cell. Ares (or rather Aphrodite) had told me that the King was lost, but perhaps the gods had not foreseen everything. So far away on Olympus, how could they possibly know which way the cards would fall, and who would turn them?


	3. Chapter 3

**London, January 30, 1649**

With my own hands, I had erected the King’s scaffold. I walked as in a dream, in this country where I had awakened from the marine sleep, abandoned by my brothers, hunted by my sister who wanted nothing but my blood, my blood which I had bequeathed to a Wallachian revenant, along with my heart and body. If d’Artagnan’s plan worked, the scaffold would have been deprived its victim and my honor would be restored. But if we failed… _Oh_ if we failed…

The flap rose and Aramis appeared beneath the scaffold with me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my lips against his. 

“Adieu,” I said.

“Do not be so dramatic,” he breathed against my lips. “Au revoir, my love. We shall meet again when this charade is over, and with the King safe in our protection.”

“Be then of good courage, my demon lover. You’ll let yourself be slain but save the King?”

“If you do but promise to revive me with a kiss.” He smiled again and pressed me against the beams of the scaffold. “Hm… this is exciting.” And it was, I felt the evidence of his excitement pressing against my own. His white hand fluttered down my worker’s doublet and groped for my breeches.

“Aramis… the King.”

“The King for whom you too will risk your every limb. And I’m too fond of all your limbs to let them go without a proper farewell.” His lips swallowed my laugher and my sighs. My eyes fluttered and knees weakened. I wanted him too much, and my arms reached out to wrap around him, holding him fast against my body even as I heard the sound of the populace saunter past the scaffold, gossiping like hungry magpies. “And you? You will not let them kill you, will you?” his teeth held the tendons of my neck between them, without clenching, like a tigress carrying her cub by the scruff.

“You know very well, only one thing can kill me,” I breathed heavily, bucking into his grip as his body slid against mine.

“Then you will never die again, my love.”

My pulse quickened, I gasped and felt the sharp points of his fangs descending into my neck, only to withdraw much too quickly. His tongue made short laps against my skin, hiding the evidence of his farewell. I spilled myself into his hand and let my head fall backwards against the wooden beam.

“That’s properly done now,” my demon smiled and kissed me, making my head spin with drunken delight. “What message, Monsieur, would you have me pass along in the event of your untimely demise?”

“Tell d’Artagnan I love him as a son,” we both laughed at that. “And take Porthos to Greece.”

“You haven’t forgotten both your follies then?”

“You do have a way of making me forget,” I admitted and ran my fingers through his shorn hair. Without that protective mane, he seemed younger still. What did others see when they looked at him? Not this - not the Wallachian youth of barely twenty with eyes like embers and lips like rose petals. 

I kissed him one last time, with my eyes closed, to see if I could feel the four hundred year old demon behind the face of a twenty year old angel. 

“The Gods be damned, kitten, but I love you.”

"I am as sure now that the king will be saved,” he replied, slipping out of my arms and taking my hand in his, “as I am sure that I clasp the most loyal hand in the world." And then he was gone, leaving me under the scaffold, to while away the hours before…

Before...

The interminable silence. The beating of the drum. D’Artagnan in the front row. Did the gods damn me back as I had damned them? The footsteps on the scaffold. The King’s voice. _Aramis’_ voice. All was lost. All was lost and I had to stand there and bear witness to it. I, a son of Zeus, helpless to stop the hands of Fate, helpless to avert the axe from coming crashing down upon the King’s neck, and all because it was my sister’s hand that guided it. I did not know it then. Would it have made a difference if I did? Would I have revealed myself for who and what I was to avert that axe? No, because Aramis had been there too, and he would never have forgiven me.

The King addressed his last words to me through the thin covering of the scaffold, binding me in time to this place once again. The money in Newcastle Keep for the future King Charles II. I knew I would not find peace until I saw the Stuarts restored to the throne of England.

“Remember!” the martyred King spoke in his full, sonorous voice, and the axe fell.

Like black feathers raining from Olympus, his blood fell upon my head, and thus marked with it, I carried my guilt back to our rooms in the Bedford Tavern, where I beheld myself in the mirror and the King’s spilled blood accused me. There was so much we could have done, had we but done it sooner. My vision went black and I fell to the floor, my ears filled with nothing but Discord’s laughter.

***

The snow was falling thick and icy. I had rushed through the streets of London with my cloak pulled tightly around me and one hand pressed against my chest, where two poignards burned against my skin, next to my crucifix and the talismans. I glided upstairs and burst into our chamber to discover Athos almost insensible.

My own heart, so hard put upon by the events of the day, stopped and then erupted from my chest, dragging me in its wake by its strings. I was by Athos’ side before I knew that I had moved, and gathered him up in my arms. To witness a royal death - had Athos’ heart borne it? It had once broken upon the demise of Alexander of Macedon, and while Charles Stuart had not been ‘great’ by any measure, he _had_ been king. Athos lay in a half-swoon, but at the first words I uttered, he roused himself from the kind of lethargy in which he had sunk.

“Well,” I said, relief coursing through my veins like liquor. “Beaten by Fate!” By Tyche. By the gods. By _Eris_.

“Beaten!” said Athos. He was clinging to my arm, his fingers digging painfully into my flesh. “Noble and unhappy king!”

“Are you wounded?” The smell of blood, potent and sweet, not his, _not his_ , and yet it clung to his skin and called out to me. I brushed Athos’ hair from his brow and scanned the pale face for traces of injury. Athos’ fingers were covered in dried blood, and I passed a trembling hand over them, feeling for cuts or broken bones.

“No, this is his blood.”

I exhaled shakily. I moved my hand over Athos’ chest, around the curve of his ribs, feeling for injuries but encountering only solid bones and firm muscles that shivered with tension. I pulled out my own handkerchief, wetted its corner in my mouth and began to wipe blood off Athos’ delicate fingers.

“Where were you, then?” I said to mask my concern.

“Where you left me.” Athos had turned his head and was speaking into my chest. “Under the scaffold.”

“Did you see it all?” _I_ had seen it all. I had seen the king kneel, lips moving as if in prayer. As if exchanging secret vows with a lover. I had seen Charles put his head on the block. Seen the axe come down like the thunderbolt of a vengeful pagan god.

“No, but I heard all.” Athos swallowed convulsively and his hand clenched around a fistful of my cassock. “God preserve me from another such hour as I have just passed,” he whispered feverishly.

‘Amen’, I thought with sudden and unexpected religious fervour, such as I had not experienced in many years.

“Then you know that I did not leave him?” I said, very quietly, stroking Athos’ hair with trembling fingers.

I felt Athos smile. “I heard your voice up to the last moment.”

I knew. I had made sure to speak whenever I got the chance; to let Athos know that I was there. That Athos was not alone, that I had not forsaken him in his ordeal.

There was something I could do for Athos, even now. I reached into my vestments and pulled out the talismans of the dead monarch. “Here is the order he gave me and the cross I took from his hand; he desired they should be returned to the queen.” I pressed them into Athos’ palm and curled both our fingers around them.

Athos stirred, as if the touch of the royal mementos had reanimated his spirits. “Then here is a handkerchief to wrap them in,” he replied, drawing from his pocket one that was soaked in blood. I inhaled sharply. The fragrance of a king’s blood, of royal blood. Of blood that was stronger, more ancient, more potent than that of mere humans. Athos must have steeped it into the monarch’s blood as it dripped down on his face through the cracks in the scaffold. I touched my fingertips to the lace fringe of the savaged silk and watched Athos wrap the order and the cross in it with much care. I pressed my lips to Athos’ forehead and Athos curled his shoulders into me and rested his head against my breast. We remained wrapped around each other for several minutes, listening to the sound of each other’s hearts, feeling the other breathe; our chests, our blood moving in the same rhythm. It was Athos who broke the reverent silence first.

“And what,” he continued, almost succeeding in keeping his voice from shaking, “has been done with the poor body?”

His voice tore me out of my trance. “By order of Cromwell, royal honours will be accorded to it. The doctors are embalming the corpse, and when it is ready it will be placed in a lighted chapel.”

“Mockery,” Athos muttered savagely. “Royal honours to one whom they have murdered!”

The sound of footsteps alerted us to the presence of another. I dropped my arm that had lain around Athos’ shoulder, but Athos grabbed my wrist. For the span of a breath, we looked at each other, and then Athos leaned in, brushed his mouth against mine, and stood.

“Well, cheer up!” said a loud voice from the staircase which Porthos had just mounted. “We are all immortal, my poor friends.”

***

“Really now?” Aramis hissed, his hands still lingering upon his lover’s arms. “Say that louder - I don’t think Oliver Cromwell quite heard you.”

I frowned at his snippishness and pronounced with great flourish, “We are all _mortal_ , my poor friends.” And added with a smirk, “Better?”

“You are late,” Athos stirred from the revenant’s touch and took a step sideways.

“I had to throttle someone on my way back. For dancing. Poor taste, don’t you find?”

“And have you seen d’Artagnan?” Aramis inquired with an open sneer.

"Oh! I saw him,” Athos responded, bile rising up in him to make his skin sallow and his voice venomous. “He was in the front row of the crowd, admirably placed for seeing; and as on the whole the sight was curious, he probably wished to stay to the end."

Just as Aramis was about to dissolve into a puddle of glee at Athos’ seeming reproach of the Gascon, we spoke of the Devil, and the Devil appeared.

"Ah, comte de La Fère," d’Artagnan chided, "is it your habit to calumniate the absent?"

What followed was a scene quite worthy of the stage, full of recriminations and reconciliations; the latter, it appeared, much to Aramis’ chagrin. What did, however, make me and Aramis feel ostensibly better, was the jist of the tale told by the Gascon: he had followed the executioner, with Grimaud’s help - Grimaud who now stood watch over the vile perpetrator - and thus put the murdering upstart in our cross-hairs, where he belonged. Aramis called for our swords, and even Athos, who moments earlier had been declaring his desire to leave the shores of Albion forever, appeared to regain some of his color at the thought of spilling the blood of the man who had dared spill the blood of a king. All in all, it promised to be fine sport!

We had located Athos’ Grigori at his post, where d’Artagnan had stationed him, at the place which turned out to belong to none other than General Wart-faced Roundhead himself. Agile like a cat, Grimaud had no problems to climb up over a ledge and position himself so that he could peek over the shutters at the axe-wielder within. But then, Grimaud, who surely must have also had nine lives, proceeded to fall from the window, and then stutteringly and grudgingly informed us whom we would have the pleasure of encountering inside.

“He--he--is…” Grimaud looked a fright and grabbed onto Athos’ hand for protection, although I’d be hard pressed to say for whose protection it was.

“He - who?” Athos asked, losing patience.

“Mordaunt!”

D’Artagnan, Aramis, and I shouted with joy, while Athos wiped at the imaginary blood upon his brow and muttered something about “Fatality!”

“Is he… quite himself?” I nudged at Aramis, whose eyes flashed back at me from under his long lashes. That night, he seemed even more fey and unhinged than usual. The King’s execution must have delayed what urgent gratification he might otherwise seek in his beloved’s skilled embrace. I tried not to think about it too much, but they were just so very _there_ , and not requiring much in the way of imagination.

“I’m less worried about him being _quite himself_ than I am wondering the same about M. Mordaunt,” Aramis replied, pulling me aside.

“You think he’s in the grip of-”

“A goddess-”

“Eris?”

Aramis blinked and for a moment looked incredibly young and out of place.

At this time, d’Artagnan had once again resumed command, stationing Athos and Aramis at one entrance while dragging me away to stand guard over the other. Very soon, one of those doors would open, and we would face the nemesis. 

We did not have to wait long. The son of the demon-witch was forced back into Cromwell’s house from whence he tried to flee, whilst I rubbed my hands in gleeful impatience, and Aramis bit his lips until drops of blood apparated on the thin skin. I could not help but wonder at _whose_. Aramis and I were both quite keen to kill the young whipper-snapper, a desire ostensibly equally shared by the Gascon, yet eschewed by our demigod, who sat himself in the corner and all but turned to stone. 

He eyed Mordaunt with such apprehension that I half-expected his meat-suit to fall away and have the Goddess of Discord appear in the middle of the room, naked and with her black wings spread wall-to-wall. I glanced over at Aramis and noted that he looked upon the nemesis much the same way, only with deadlier intent than Athos.

D’Artagnan, who was having quite the time delighting in his own humorous eloquence, at last offered Mordaunt a duel, which the vile murderer accepted only if he could name his opponent. 

“I choose for my adversary the man who, not thinking himself worthy to be called the comte de La Fère, calls himself Athos," said Mordaunt.

Athos and Aramis both sprung from their chairs. A silent conversation to which no one else in the room was privy, but one that I saw them conduct clear as day, took place before all present. And then, Athos replied: "Monsieur Mordaunt, a duel between us is impossible. Submit this honour to somebody else." And he sat back down.

And this moment the vile dog accused Athos of cowardice, succeeding only in riling the rest of us up. It was decided then, that the duelist would be chosen by lot, the lots to be drawn up by Aramis, who walked over to Cromwell’s desk and scribbled something on three pieces of paper, which he then presented to Mordaunt, whose eye passed over the names written there with carelessness bordering on boredom. Milady’s whelp cast another look in Athos’ direction, his lips twitching with anticipation of blood denied him. D’Artagnan was watching Mordaunt, and I was watching Aramis, whose duty it became to read aloud the name drawn by the nemesis from the hat.

Aramis opened the paper, and in a voice trembling with hate and vengeance read "D'Artagnan." And then he crumbled the paper in his hand. I met his eyes and raised my eyebrow. Was it Fate who had decreed this? Or had the revenant single-handedly decided that it was the man who had violated Mordaunt’s mother who should cross swords with her son? I did not get a chance to ask before the duel commenced.

I should have merely reached out with my hand and crushed him like Heracles had crushed the viper in his cradle. Why keep up this pretense at being French nobility when all could see, couldn’t they, who and what I truly was? One grasp, and the little scoundrel would have died then and there, sending Eris flying back to Greece in tears, no doubt. But no, the Goddess of Discord had different plans for her favourite: she had a bonfire planned for us all upon the seas, and to light it, Mordaunt had to escape our clutches.

With just a push on a hidden spring, Milady’s bastard disappeared through a secret door, some sort of _trompe l’œil_ , before d’Artagnan could pin him to the wall like a furry moth.

"It's a misfortune, to which his friend, the Devil, treats us," Aramis squeezed between his teeth, dissatisfied with the outcome of the bout on all fronts.

"It's a piece of good fortune sent from Heaven," Athos contradicted him, with a soft look.

There was a felucca waiting for us upon the waters of the English Channel. It was called _Lightning_ and it was equipped by the Goddess of Discord.


	4. Chapter 4

**La Manche, January 30/31, 1649**

With the king dead, London had lost its charm. We departed without a backward glance and without regret and arrived in Greenwich in the dead of night. The _Lightning_ was moored there, ready to carry us back to France. Muffled up in a thick cloak, an Irish oaf awaited us on the deserted jetty in the captain’s stead, and mine and d’Artagnan’s suspicions were instantly roused. For once of one mind, we agreed to go aboard nevertheless and, if necessary, to blow the Irishman’s brains out, in which case Athos would navigate us across the Channel. Thus decided, we boarded: Athos went first, displaying his marine proclivities to advantage. I was aided in my ascent by my experience with rope ladders and other methods of climbing into guarded and forbidden spaces. D’Artagnan clambered like a hunter of mountain goats. While Porthos, aided by his superior strength, would find it easy to haul himself on deck even if he had not been captain of the Grilled Octopus for the best part of three centuries.

Our servants found the task more daunting – all but Grimaud, whose plethora of hidden talents never ceased to amaze me. Sleek and limber like an alley cat, he slithered up the hull without apparent effort. Porthos’ Mousqueton and my Blaisois had to be heaved up by their collars, and Porthos, for whom this task presented no difficulty whatsoever, flung them onto the bridge. “Tomorrow we shall be at Boulogne,” our Titanic friend pronounced. And yet, d’Artagnan was restless. He insisted on making the round of the boat in company with the Irishman and with Grimaud as his interpreter. (For d’Artagnan, despite having spent several months in England, had picked up only two words: one was ‘come’, and the other the classic English oath. I did not dwell unduly on pondering where he would have acquired such vocabulary.)

Athos and I exchanged a glance, and I shrugged. We could trust d’Artagnan and Grimaud to inspect our vessel thoroughly, and there was no reason why we should not go and get some rest. A berth had been put at our disposal for the night, and Athos, Porthos and I squeezed inside and began to prepare for bed. Athos and I began to prepare for bed, to be precise, for Porthos embarked on a quest for supper. It consisted of searching our meagre luggage for traces of any victuals and cursing lustily in a variety of languages. It seemed that the fearsome baby-eating ogre of the Mediterranean reverted to his old buccaneering vernacular the moment he felt the planks of a ship underfoot.

“How are you feeling?” Athos had pulled off his doublet and reached across to help me with mine.

“All right.” I swallowed. “A bit queasy. I’ll be fine.” I let him remove my outer garments and put my arms around him. “You were magnificent tonight,” I whispered into the side of his neck.

“So were you.” Athos stroked up and down my back. “Do you want to lie down?”

“Please.”

Across the small cabin, a loud rumble, like the roll of thunder, informed us that Porthos’ quest had not been crowned by success and that he was displeased. “I’m hungry!” the son of Helios grumbled and yawned.

“Go to sleep, Porthos,” Athos said, settling down by my side. His arm curled around me and I nestled into his embrace as he pulled his cloak over us both. My stomach was rising and falling in time with the rising and falling of the waves, and the roaring of wind and water against the ship’s hull was deafening. But Athos held me close and the beat of his heart steadied me. “Did you really draw _d’Artagnan’s_ name tonight?” he asked quietly, very close to my ear.

“Do you truly believe that I would leave a matter of such gravity in the hands of Tyche?”

“That was very gracious of you. I know you wanted to fight Mordaunt yourself. To yield that right to d’Artagnan – that was an act of friendship. Affection even.”

I hummed in lieu of a response. It had not been Mordaunt alone whom d’Artagnan had faced in Cromwell’s house. It had been Eris who would have guided Mordaunt’s sword, and, had Mordaunt not run away, she would have claimed the Gascon’s blood.

In his corner, Porthos started to snore. “Bless him,” Athos said affectionately.

“He’s not at his best,” I said and swallowed convulsively, for the ship had lurched and my insides churned.

“Neither are you, little chyortik,” Athos laughed softly and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe and we’ll be home in no time.”

“In Picardy, without money or horses and in Puritan garb.” I shook my head and nipped at his earlobe. “And don’t think that I’ve forgotten this insult.” I curled a long lock of his hair around my finger and tugged. “You should have told me your hair would regrow within days before you made me cut off mine.”

“Had I told you that, you would not have cut off yours,” Athos pointed out.

“Very true.”

His warm hand alighted on my hair, cradling the back of my skull. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered against my skin. “The line of your bones, here,” he trailed a fingertip from my temple to my jaw, “sculpted by Pygmalion himself from the finest alabaster. Without your hair to obscure their lustre, your eyes are more luminous than ever,” he kissed my eyelids with reverent lips. His finger travelled further down and dipped into the hollow of my throat. “And then this.” He grazed my skin with his nail and I shivered. “This kissable dent between your collarbones…”

I cleared my throat. “You’re merely trying to distract me, count, don’t think I’m unaware of your underhand stratagem.”

He laughed into my hair. “It’s working,” he said and pressed his thigh into my groin.

The door opened and d’Artagnan stumbled in, holding a soot-spitting candle in his hand. Athos and I shifted apart and blinked against the light. My lover pulled the cloak up to our chins, while I addressed d’Artagnan. “Well?”

“All is well. We may sleep tranquilly.”

On this assurance, Athos’ body relaxed again and I pressed up against him. D’Artagnan bade goodnight to Grimaud, who was eyeing us over the Gascon’s shoulder with an expression of the deepest, most heartfelt disgust, and closed the door on him. He laid himself down on his cloak, with naked sword at his side, in such a manner that his body barricaded the passage and it should be impossible to enter the cabin without upsetting him. The ship rocked on the waves. Athos threaded his fingers through mine and summoned Hypnos with a soft sigh.

I awoke to a stranger’s hot breath hitting my ear and neck and a hand on my shoulder that was not that of Athos. “Chevalier,” a voice that I recognised as d’Artagnan’s whispered, “Get up and don’t make the least noise.”

I blinked, confused and displaced, for I had permitted myself to fall into a deep sleep in order to escape the clutches of the mal de mer.

“Athos is near you,” d’Artagnan continued with his usual perspicacity. “Warn him as I have warned you.”

I easily aroused Athos, whose sleep was light, like that of all persons of a finely organised constitution. But there was more difficulty in arousing Porthos. He was beginning to ask full explanation of that breaking in on his sleep, which was very annoying to him, when d’Artagnan, instead of explaining, closed his mouth with his hand. “Friends,” he said, “we must leave this craft at once or we are dead men.”

Long-winded explanations followed: of casks filled with powder about to be lit and of a projected inferno in which we were to fry. For the admiral of our ship was Death, and its captain and lieutenant were our old foes Mr Groslow (who had taken the appearance of the mummed and mumbling Irishman) and Mordaunt (who had kept himself concealed under Eris’ own wings until the time to kill us with fire drew near). The tale culminated in d’Artagnan devising an ingenious plan to save all our lives: the crew were supposed to abandon the doomed ship like rats and board the longboat that trailed in the ship’s wake; all we had to do was steal it from under their nose and sail to France.

Even as we stood arguing about the logistics of the undertaking, Grimaud scurried to and fro through the cabin, wrapping, bundling, heaping, cramming, tying, and, eventually, he ended up with an oilskin cloth rolled into a long sausage and began to take off his clothes. We stared, but Grimaud continued, unabashed. “January night,” he said. “Clothes would freeze. We can’t swim in an armour of ice.”

“Master Grimaud, you have your wits about you,” d’Artagnan said and began to disrobe also.

‘As usual,’ Grimaud’s face said plain as day.

“You save all our lives,” d’Artagnan continued in his praise, as we all shed our garments in great haste.

‘You don’t say,’ Grimaud’s grimace responded. He girded his loins with the oilcloth sausage like a knight readying himself for fighting a dragon.

Beside me, Athos was slinging a belt around his hips which held his poignard. I turned my gaze away, for the sight of his nude body, beautiful like a Grecian statue, sparked a most untimely fire in my loins. I brushed the tips of my fingers against the back of his hand as I turned and I felt his blood heave in response.

And so we jumped. We swam. D’Artagnan with his heart full of heroic fervour; Athos with his customary disregard for death; Porthos with the pigheaded determination of a leviathan; Grimaud with Olympian disdain; and Mousqueton and Blaisois with much lament and jeremiads of imminent death. And I – with my sword between my teeth and my breast filled with bone-melting dread.

Beneath us, the waters heaved. Their icy depths were the home of marine behemoths, whose slimy tentacles slithered up, probing the waves for the flesh of the condemned. Of men who had defied the Goddess of Discord; the spurned sister-lover, who had once before sacrificed her brother to the abyss. Was the kraken rising from its lair even now? Bile rose in my throat and I choked and spluttered, and icy salt water sloshed above my head.

I fought my way back to the surface and my frozen fingers slammed against slick wood. The longboat. I tossed my sword aboard and heaved myself up, where I crouched, shivering, spluttering and gasping. Porthos shoved Mousqueton at the boat, and once he saw his faithful homunculus safely on board, he swung his massive leg over the edge, almost upsetting us all.

Athos was the last to swing himself in. “Are you all here?” he asked.

“Do you have your sword, Athos?” gasped d’Artagnan.

“Yes.” My lover’s voice was quiet and steady as ever, and I wanted to weep.

“Cut the cable, then.”

Athos drew his poniard from his belt and cut the cord. The felucca went on; our boat remained stationary, rocked only by the swashing waves.

“Come, Athos!” d’Artagnan choked out between chattering teeth, reaching for my lover’s hand. “You are going to see something curious.”

My gaze dropped to the Gascon’s groin before I could check myself. _Something curious_ … Oh, how I longed to bore my teeth into the flesh of his throat. My limbs were frozen solid, the steel of my sword blistered the skin of my hands. _Blood_. Hot, human blood. Blood to warm my own, to restore me to life. Blood to spill into the waters and propitiate the behemoth, the hydra, who was gaining on us from the depths.

***

With growing horror, I watched the inferno on the seas unfurl before us. My, but she really wanted me fucked to Tartarus this time, didn’t she? I watched silently as the _Lightning_ sank before my eyes. Fire could not kill me, but I still did not fancy being torn to shreds by an explosion, especially an explosion over open water. And what of Aramis? Could a fiery conflagration at last consume him? Without me there to put him back together, what would become of him? And even so, would putting the pieces together have worked? Could a revenant come back from ashes, like a cursed demigod? I cast one look at Grimaud, as if to ascertain myself of how close to utter disaster we have come. My Grigori gave me a stony look of disapproval and pulled a cloak from his makeshift sack, wrapping it around his shivering, nude form.

I looked upon the smoking remnants of the felucca and said, “Surely, it’s all over now.” The nemesis perished in the same flames that my sister had planned for me. But no, the gods were not through trying me yet.

“Here! Save me! Help!” a sad imploration reached us all from the waves. It was him, Mordaunt, it was his voice. Buoyed by the gods themselves, he made desperate strokes towards our liferaft. 

I looked each one of my companions over, my lover's gaze speaking volumes in the line of “You have got to be kidding me!” My eyes pleaded for mercy; Aramis’ fangs dropped. 

The man in the waves begged for his life, while my friends responded with coldhearted and colder-bodied jeers. Aramis, eyes aflame with a preternatural fire, threatened to cut off his hand if it touched our boat, while Porthos expressed the desire to jump back into the black waters to strangle the suffering man. In truth, they all had a point. That man, down there, would have had us all cooked in the great cauldron of the open sea. But there was more to it, wasn’t there? No matter what he had done, what he had become, had it not been because of what we did? What _I_ did? For if that was not Buddha’s meaning of ‘dependent origination,’ I did know what was.

"Monsieur le comte de La Fère," Mordaunt called from the waters, as if sensing that one heart was still not closed to his plight, "I beg you! Pity me! I call on you… Where are you? I can’t see you…” The cold waters of La Manche pulling him under. “I am dying… Help me! Help!"

Whether my pleas for mercy worked or my companions had folded up arms against the wings of destiny, I know not. In retrospect, my sister’s power must have been great that night, for them to let me slip out of their hands like that. For whatever reason, d’Artagnan consented, Aramis’ fangs withdrew as he lowered his sword, and Porthos moved an oar, bringing me within reach of the drowning man.

I grasped his hand, pulled him half-way up into the boat, and held him in my arms, for the briefest of moments offering him what he would never have offered me: absolution and salvation.

How did Medusa look upon men? It must have been with the same hatred I saw in Milady’s son’s eyes that night. “Ah, my mother!” the young man exclaimed, as his arms wrapped around my shoulders, “I can only offer you one victim, but at least it shall be the one you would have chosen yourself!”

The boat tilted, there was a great communal gasp behind me, and then the cold waters of La Manche enveloped us both. I closed my eyes and held my breath, sinking beneath his weight into the dark and chilling void. Soon, his lips would part, his lungs would fill with water, and he would let me go. I wished I could inhale, to concentrate on my breath, to say to myself that this too was transient. He had sacrificed himself for nothing. His death would no more avenge his mother than my own, had he actually succeeded in dragging me to the bottom of the English Channel with him. Would she have chosen me, I wondered, above all others? Above d’Artagnan? Did she know, before she died, that the man who struck her down and the man who married her were not one and the same?

 _I could still save him_ , I thought. I could still balance the scales of Fate. I was strong enough to fight him off and carry us both to the surface of the waters. 

But his arms and legs wrapped around me, writhing like tentacles that taunted me from a century long gone. _No. No, no, no,_ I screamed without opening my mouth. In the darkness of the waters, who knew what lay beneath. Who knew what rose from the great abyss to swallow me. 

Discord's voice sliced through my mind like a deadly scimitar. “You didn’t really think gloves would save you, did you, brother?”

_Aramis… I had to save him. But I had dropped the dagger that I pulled from his head. And then the tentacles… the kraken… rising, rising, rising… and then: nothing but pain._

My vision went black. _No!_ I pushed at the appendages holding me tight. _No! You will not take me away from him!_ Not now. Not now that it had taken me twenty years to finally find my way back to him. _You will not win, Eris, you will never win!_

This time, the dagger was clasped tightly in my hand, and I wasn’t going to let it go until I sank it deep into the kraken’s chest. The tentacles loosened, the weight slipped off, and my legs kicked until my head broke surface. In the cold and dark void, a ray of crimson light carried me to the boat. _They won’t take me from you again_ , and my hand was on the edge of the wavering bark. It craned under my weight. 

Hands on me, three pairs of warm hands, but I concentrated on a different pair, hands that were cold as ice as they clasped around my fingers. If he squeezed any harder, he might rip my hand right off. I squeezed back and his fingers loosened. Through my numb and wrinkled fingertips, I felt him exhale. 

“You’re not hurt?” d’Artagnan’s voice sounded above me. I shook my head and a weak smile found its way onto my lips. I looked up into the night sky. The winter stars scattered above our heads. My breath froze in the air, yet I breathed.

What did I say then? “I had a son, I wanted to live,” is what Alex had me say in those moments. And had I indeed a son, a fine sentiment that would have been, for a human.

The stars were bright above my head, but brighter than all of them were Aramis’ eyes, brimming with fear and relief, beaming with light, a light that spoke of as much rage as affection, as much punishment as love.

“Fuck Olympus!” is what I actually said, or so Aramis informed me after, for my own memory of those moments is cloudy as the mist through which our boat floated, bandied about by Marie’s kin, no doubt. “And fuck that bitch Eris, especially.”

“What did he say?” d’Artagnan’s voice carried on the mist to me. “What language did he speak?”

“It must have been English,” Porthos replied, suddenly crushing me with his weight. “Because I, for one, did not understand _a word_ of it. Did you, Aramis?”

“I should think not,” Aramis’ voice held just the slightest edge of amusement as he bent over me. “He must be delirious.” He hovered above me, his broad shoulders blocking out the night sky and our human companion. “I love you,” he whispered in Greek, and I smiled at him, thinking of the Fates and how happily I would cut their own threads, if they had tried to separate us again.

It was not I who killed him. It was Fate.

***

So quickly did we go from rending our hair to cries of joy that I could not help but wipe a furtive tear from my eye. Athos was cold and spoke Greek with such fervor that I had to whisper to Aramis to bedevil d’Artagnan, to make him forget.

“I wouldn’t worry on that account,” the revenant whispered, his teeth chattering, even though it was his lover who lay at the bottom of our bark, insensate but for his opened eyes that seemed to look upon eternity in the onyx skies.

“Blankets,” Grimaud finally pronounced and threw a piece of wooly salvation our way, which we hastened to wrap around our count. It appeared that the bark had been equipped for the escape of Messieurs Mordaunt and Groslow, may they rot in pieces inside the fish who eat them.

When he was bundled and swaddled with ferocity like a newborn babe by Aramis and d’Artagnan who avoided each other’s eyes, I breathed a sigh of relief.

"I have seen," I then declared, "many dreadful things, but nothing that ever agitated me so much as what I have just witnessed. Nevertheless, even in my present state of perturbation, I protest that I feel happy. I have a hundred pounds' weight less upon my chest. I breathe more freely." To demonstrate, I performed a powerful inhale that made each of my ribs clatter joyfully.

"For my part," Aramis replied, looking up at me with the eyes of a child who nearly lost his favorite toy, "I cannot say the same, Porthos. I am still so terrified that I scarcely believe my eyes. I look around the boat, expecting at every moment to see that poor wretch, wielding the poniard that was plunged into his heart."

Poor chyortik, as Athos would no doubt say. I had never seen him so frightened. Even in the fifteenth century, when we had lost Athos to the sea, he seemed steadfast, as if he knew - one day, one day… And there again before my eyes, he clasped his eternal spouse’s hand to his breast and closed his eyes, as if to stave off another mare.

"Oh! I feel easy," I continued, in an attempt to draw the conversation away from declarations of love towards something more mundane. "The poniard was pointed at the sixth rib and buried up to the hilt in his body. I don’t blame you, Athos, for what you’ve done. On the contrary, when one aims a blow that is the regulation way to strike. So now, I breathe again--I am happy!"

At this point, the naked Gascon reminded me to temper my joy, since we were still adrift in strange waters, without a pilot, and no food supply, for which Athos appeared to rouse himself from his stupor to berate him for not thanking Providence, or rather Grimaud, for his unexpected delivery from evil. Athos seemed certain that the Anemoi would be on our side and carry the boat steadily in the direction of Calais and Boulogne until we found rescue. D’Artagnan, who was not as well acquainted with the Winds as my old cuz, was concerned we’d get blown off course: a fate that would eventually bring us all to starvation. It was then that the subject of eating servants was brought up.

"Chevalier," d'Artagnan said, laughing, "you could eat a piece of Mouston, couldn't you, especially after two or three days of fasting?" I too laughed, for once again the Gascon did not know how very close he stood to the truth of the matter.

"Oh, no," Aramis replied sweetly, "I should much prefer Blaisois; we haven't known him so long." I exchanged a smile with the revenant, knowing full well that other than d’Artagnan himself, Blaisois was the only edible one among us, being the only other human.

As if to save himself and his comrades from a sad and bitey fate, Mousqueton pulled out a stash of provisions, which along with the blankets now covering Athos constituted Mordaunt’s emergency supply. So, we would not starve after all, I nodded with approbation.

“There aren’t enough blankets,” Aramis said, meaningfully. “D’Artagnan, you should share with Grimaud.” Grimaud who shot him a look of opened enmity but moved to the side to make room for the Gascon on the bench. The Grigori also took out something that resembled skivvies and threw them in the revenant’s face.

“To keep the Chevalier from freezing his bits off,” Athos’ impertinent guardian pronounced. Had he not saved all our hides so recently, Athos probably would have thrashed him.

I watched Aramis shrug and wiggle under the blanket with Athos. My cousin whispered something to his lover and then they, Da help me, _giggled_.

“Porthos, do you want to join us?” Aramis mewled.

Hades’ balls, I most certainly did _not_! And then there was d’Artagnan, looking at my junk like he’d never seen a man’s dong before. Although, to be fair, he may not have ever seen _my_ dong before. 

“Nope,” I muttered. “I’m gonna sit right here.” And I bundled myself into the wrinkled cloak my Mousqueton managed to salvage in one of those oilskins. I’ll warm myself from the inside, thank you very much, if the sun refuses to rise. My skin prickled in the easterly direction in anticipation of sunrise.

“I know you didn’t want to kill him,” I heard Aramis say to Athos, “But thank you for doing it.”

“I have the most beautiful lover in the world,” Athos whispered back. “I wanted to live.”

“And I prayed for the gods to grant me deafness,” I muttered under my breath, “but no! Damned demi-divine hearing, potent as ever!”

“What was that?” the Gascon yawned.

“Nothing. Go to sleep, my son,” Athos replied and Aramis and I both exchanged amused looks. “I’ll navigate us while you all rest.”

 _Will you use the Aramisian cock as a rudder?_ I thought. And, of course, “That’s not the rudder,” I heard from under their blanket, followed by more tittering.

“Are you sure, chyortik?”

“Oh, Your Dad!” I sighed and threw Athos a threatening look. “No wonder Eris wants you exploded into pieces.”

They both cast about for a second to make sure d’Artagnan was asleep: he certainly appeared that way, buffered by naked Blaisois and equally nude Mousqueton. 

“I mean, Great Gods!” I went on. “The way the two of you get on, I’m surprised the kraken doesn’t rise up and just swallow this entire boat whole.”

“Well, there’s an entirely not reassuring thought,” Aramis mumbled and burrowed further into Athos’ body.

“Sleep, my diablik,” the demigod whispered into his lover’s hair, “I won’t let any sea monster eat you.” And then he added, “Nor that ogre, Porthos.”

“Don’t make me throw you off the boat again,” I scowled at him, meeting only his blissful smile in return. “You’re both so disgusting. How do you live with yourselves?”

“You like it. You cry like a babe abandoned when we’re apart.”

“Shut up, Athos.”

“Is this as bad as the time we sank the Grilled Octopus?”

“Seriously, I’m gonna punch you in the face.”

“Not the face,” Aramis purred and covered Athos’ visage with his dainty white hand, as if to shield it from me.

“See what I mean? Gross.” 

I shook my head, and continued to use what was left of my Da’s energy to warm myself from within. Soon enough, Hypnos claimed me as well. Gods only know what the two of them did in that liferaft while the rest of us slept. I hoped the Olympians got what meager enjoyment out of it that they found due.


End file.
